


Boukyaku no Tsurugi

by Synthasia



Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-10-18 09:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20637134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synthasia/pseuds/Synthasia
Summary: A past enemy wishes to settle a score with Nico Robin. And, perhaps, Roronoa Zoro might have something to talk about with her after everything's over. Set after Fish-Man Island arc, a little shortly before receiving a distress call from Punk Hazard.





	1. this powerless heart

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song Boukyaku no Tsurugi by Ayane. Fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13384493/1/Boukyaku-no-Tsurugi

Zoro heads for the grassy deck, ears tuning into the chatter of the crew and the occasional battering of sea waves. The weather has slipped into a calmer backdrop, what with a patchy drizzle and the indifferent shades of indigo-black in the sky, a welcome lull from the tempestuous ones they barely got out of. While he's quite thrilled to finally clash blades with the New World, there's a lingering relief nagging at the back of his head. He's hoping that this semblance of respite will last for a longer bit of time. Of course, considering they're already in the second half of the Grand Line, it's a moot point.

He glances about him and notices that Nami isn't around the area. She's possibly idling in the women's quarters, or, if she's feeling more complacent, helping herself to a relaxing bath. Something about that unsettles him. The crew needs her most at a time like this, having been just introduced to the even more mercurial segment of the sea. Regardless, they have yet to reach an island.

The prospect of adventure may have to wait, like a matter of tomorrow.

After a few minutes, the sky's already clear from the drizzle, with no gradual signs of having died down at all. They just went as swiftly as they came. Zoro saunters to where the fuss is most concentrated. There, by the white rails, he sees Luffy, Usopp, and Chopper, apparently trying to catch fish (or any edible creature, really) for the night. They lost all of what would have been their food to the whirlpool they were sucked into. They're not having any luck by the looks of it. He decides to remain in their vicinity for the meantime, in the event they score a good catch and he will have to slice it to dinner bits. Brook is standing by, too, and, Zoro can't tell from that solid, skeletal front, but Brook seems just as hungry as the rest of them.

"Oi," he calls out. "How long has it been?"

Luffy's tongue is lolling out and the look on his face is about as helpless as melted candle wax. "Herlp... herlp me..." he drones. "Gimme meat... Dying..."

"Goodness," Brook sighs woefully. "My stomach is gnawing with hunger." Then he pauses for good measure. "Not that I have a stomach to begin with. _Yohohoho_."

"Wait! I caught something!" Chopper exclaims, voice pitching to a shrill, convincing enough to draw wide-eyed attention from the others. "It's here!"

"Ooooooooooooooo!" Luffy whoops.

"Reel it in, Chopper, put your back on it!" Usopp scampers over, peppy like a moth under glass.

In a habitual motion, Zoro's arms cross over his chest, studying the comedic display before him like a prized handiwork. Something to be preserved and cherished. His ears catch the light clicking of footsteps, characteristically unhurried and sure; along with it, a whiff of scented flowers, a fragrance that's grown familiar. He doesn't move, but he's losing ground rapidly, blindsided and caught for no warrant or reason.

Robin steps into the high-spirited fray and stops mere meters from him. She dons the ceaseless role of a passive observer, with a smile curled to an enigmatic point. Zoro doesn't so much as bother her with a glance or acknowledgment. This has become a pattern between them, instinct-wired and the needlessness of words. Their arms are nearly touching. A chuckle spills past her lips, fingers hovered to her chin, and remarks, predictably, "It's lively as always."

Zoro doesn't respond at first, just watches the rest of the crew before glimpsing her at the corner of his eye. He sees the side of her face and that pleased expression she uncompromisingly wears. He thinks of how they met two years ago, of the barriers that have been built and fallen, and the notion of how she hasn't changed even through it all.

_What a lively ship. Is it always like this?_ She had asked.

He takes in her smile, then the corners of his lips tug into a grin, infected. "Yeah," he says. "It is."

* * *

Dinner passes by formulaic and homely, yet no less flavorful.

The fish they caught was a monstrous deal. Its raw features were hideous, with only one eye swelling so close to its spike-toothed mouth. Zoro doesn't remember it having a nose whatsoever. Nothing looked normal about it from head to fin. This is where Sanji does best, fleshing out distinctive recipes from a very limited reservoir, embellishing what he likes, handpicking ordinary ingredients for a bold finish. It's an odd feat. All from an ugly, colossal fish.

Everything else is just as perfect. A veritable feast of the Straw Hats' culinary favorites, all of Zoro's joys partaken and washed down with appreciative chugs of sake. Usopp keeps the morsels on his plate unguarded, and Luffy continues to be tempted, and it's hard not to laugh when he steals every spare piece he can find from everyone else's dishes.

They all talk for what seems like hours. About their usual shenanigans, their inside jokes, their running gags, hauling up well-remembered adventures and highlighting some details. Later, as Sanji agrees to second helpings, with glasses refilled and mouths back to chewing, they steep into deeper territory.

"Have you all thought about what to do after finding One Piece?" Chopper asks, and, like a stone skipping then sinking to a river, the silence grows alarmingly thick.

It's a topic not quite well-tread as they would have liked. Though they do have dreams, and now, a shared one as a crew, they have only done as much as treat each day as a new battle, a sense of fulfillment after a cloudburst of hurdles. It feels far away. And so the conversation still settles light, warmed in the kitchen heat, heartened by savory aftertastes of spices and fish and sake on their tongues, yet there's a weight to it somewhere. It's a fun mental exercise at present. One after the other, they speak up, brief, and flavored with a smile as if to stave off uncertainty. Playing the game of "One Day", being masters of their destinies. And they are. They're pirates, anyway.

"When the map is complete," Nami begins, leaning back against her seat and putting her glass down, flyaway hair spilling to her shoulders. "Maybe I'll go back home," she finishes. There's something that clouds over her eyes, one that doesn't speak of greed, but of nostalgic tangerines.

"Hrmmm," Usopp hums. "Mine's a very hard situation, because..." He coughs to clear his throat. "... I still have a grand _fleet_ of eight _million_ loyal followers to go adventuring with—"

"Maybe I'll go home for a while, too!" Chopper interjects and Sanji pulls a, "That's a good idea, Nami-san" over Usopp's _'Listen to meeeee'_.

"_Ow!_" Franky beams. "I could take over Iceburg in Galley-La. _Super_ shipwright!"

The gears crank in Zoro's head. Finally, something random: "Open up a dojo." Or a shop that sells his favorite sake.

"It would be most wonderful to return to Laboon again," Brook says, adorning his words with that same, feather-light gentility. "And when I do, I will play all the riveting tunes I've composed just for him. It would be nothing short of delightful."

"After I find the All Blue, I can go back to the Baratie. And maybe..." A grin takes root on Sanji's face, eyes rolling upward, nostrils flared. The crew can picture a horde of buxom beauties all over his head. "Hehehehe."

"Dumbass," Zoro deadpans.

"_Huh?!_"

Luffy's laughter rings across the room. It's short-lived, but a smile stretches like the roaring tide. "They all sound great!" he says with a nod, arms crossed over his chest. There's a crackling potency to his gusto. The buzzing sentiment that his crew is made of dreams, and of the distant future they've yet to embrace.

"What will you do, Robin?" Chopper asks. Everyone else's attention slots into the archaeologist. She's long since finished her meal, her silence taking a pleasant dip as she takes Chopper's words into consideration. Robin looks back at her friends with unblinking eyes. They have that muted, unfocused sheen, fogged up by something vacant. Zoro watches her in the dense quiet, witnesses her being miles away to summery fields where peonies grow best.

Robin doesn't know what to say, because she is happy, and part of her dream is already fulfilled. Her home has been dashed to nonexistence. But she is here in the Thousand Sunny, a sheltered warmth in the pelagic depths of her eyes. It's a good change from the stern shell she's known to wear for twenty years. Her contentment softens the lines around her gaze, brightens her whole from the inside.

Zoro stifles a small smile despite himself.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful?" She places her glass down, with a soft finality, the clinking of ice cubes. "To stay together, that is."

Her words trigger silence, and within it, a cacophony of emotions pooling in the pause of their drinks, the frozen point of their smiles. A little while longer and the aftermath stages a break in their hard-fought restraint.

Chopper wails. "Don't say something like that! Jerk!"

"Waaaah!" Franky sobs indignantly. "I'm not crying! You idiots!"

"That is truly heartwarming, Robin-san. I..." Brook places a hand on his chest, over the ruffle of his luxurious jabot. "... when the time comes, may I do the honor of seeing your panties—" Nami whiplashes Brook with a full fist. "You're the worst!"

Sanji hums with faint, indulgent musing, playing mindlessly with his cigarette, continues: "After Luffy becomes King of the Pirates..."

"We do whatever we want," Zoro finishes.

Luffy can't help himself. He laughs high and delighted, burnished with fondness and excitement, perhaps thinking of where they might go next, the things they still have to see. To his crew's collective shock, he stretches his arms and catches them all in his rubber hold, spills their drinks on the floor, showering dregs of wasted food. And he tucks them with his all-teeth smile, feeling them whole and safe.

His stretched grip feels infinite.

* * *

Zoro stands from his seat just in time for him to hear Luffy, Chopper, and Usopp clamor in unison for dessert. Sanji's impatience tips to a boiling point. It doesn't stop Luffy from bounding straight towards the cook and demanding for something tasty. When Robin also pipes up for dessert, Sanji is immediately compliant with literal hearts in his eyes.

"I'd like to have a sandwich, please," she says.

"Anything for you, Robin-_chwan_! Right away," Sanji swoons. "What kind of sandwich?"

Robin smiles. "I'd love anything you make."

Sanji almost faints from being struck to the heart. "A_aaah_, my beloved Robin-chwan is too sweet." He twirls in place, completely uncaring.

Zoro scoffs, "You're wack in the brain." He walks to the door. "Shitty cook."

Immediately, Sanji snaps, "I don't wanna hear that from you, shitty moss head!"

Zoro flicks back another satisfying, dirty look before he grips the doorknob. Chopper and Usopp skip to where Robin's seated, and if anyone were to listen closely, those two sound like children asking for a bedtime story, happily puffed up and cheerful, a conversation between siblings. Zoro pauses as soon as Robin starts speaking in length. Chopper is barraging her with eager questions about the book she's reading, and Robin's more than happy to engage, quietly earnest and tranquil in comparison. In a precision of slow motion, Zoro finds himself blurring out Chopper's words to make leeway for Robin's. She has long since accustomed her tone of voice to coolness, with a degree of investment, reminiscent of the greatest scholars ever known. He's fixed his gaze on her face, stunned to a vague sort of stupor at the sight of her passion-flared eyes. He manages to catch snippets of their discussion. Something about paranormal activity in a fallen archipelago dated centuries before. Chopper's mouth is agape. Usopp is spilling fat tears of fear. Robin is laughing.

He tightens his grip on the doorknob then heads out.

He knows he needs sleep, but he thinks it should be a long one, just to clear his head.


	2. falls into the shadows

Nami fiddles her fingers against her pearly earrings, taking them off and setting them neatly on the pile of small jewels by the mirror. She's found a hanger somewhere, and she hangs one of her shirts then, says a couple of dismal words about the wet dye of raspberry-red on the surface, how she plans on charging Luffy about a hundred thousand beri per stain. Robin chuckles and tells her how merciless she is. Nami sighs.

There's the hush of fabric as Robin pulls a jacket draped over a chair and shrugs it over her shoulders. It has grown quite cold, and she joins Nami on one of the sofas, passing her a hot mug of coffee. Robin picks up a fashion magazine that appears to be featuring runway trends somewhere in East Blue. She flicks through a plethora of near-repetitive designs until she stops on a random dull page of women's tank tops.

It's about ten minutes later when Nami's silence grows pensive, and Robin notices she's had her eyes fixed on the quaint picture frame by the table. There's Nami's family (and at the same time, they aren't, really). Bellemere's jaws are steeled into a grin, cigarette wedged between her teeth with a smoldering red end. In the picture, Nami is beside her and is a decade or so younger. Something strikes like flint in the reflection of those eyes. Like happiness. And beside her, still, is another little girl. She has a smile too big for her face, but it looks right on the roundness of her joy, and so sincere it must hurt.

Robin gets reacquainted with the nostalgic prickle of memory that's not for hers to relive. She carefully flips the magazine close and wonders if she should make conversation, wondering what she can, or _should_ say.

"It seems the frame's all worn out by now," Robin remarks. "Perhaps you'd like to replace it soon?"

At once, Nami looks struck, overwhelmed by a snap of reality. Her eyes travel to Robin's, and she offers a sheepish smile. "Sorry about that," she says. "I spaced out."

Robin sees a war of homesickness being waged behind the cracks, reinforcements fashioned in lieu of fallen defenses. She returns a smile of her own. And she remains quiet, non-confrontational, as her attention reverts to the family picture. She makes a small motion to the child beside Nami. "That girl over there is..."

This time, the smile on Nami's face reaches her eyes. "Nojiko." She leans her back against the plush comfort of the sofa. "It can't be helped. It's going to be a while before I see her again."

"It must be wonderful. Having a sister, that is."

Robin's tone has shifted, oddly more subdued than intended. Nami is quickly aware that they're no longer talking about Nojiko.

"You never had a sibling?"

"Not one," Robin answers with a shake of her head. It feels like the question was a prod meant to steer the course in another direction, rather than for the straight-cut 'yes'-or-'no' response. "Though I'll admit there was a girl I met who came close."

"Really?!" Nami's eyes widen, disbelieving. "I've never heard of that one before! Where is she?"

Robin gives a moment to shrug. She wants an answer to that, too. "I don't know. It was eighteen years ago, to be exact. She took me in when I didn't have a place to live at the time."

Something doesn't add up. Nami frowns. "But, she..."

"I ran away as soon as she found out I was wanted by the World Government."

"... Oh." Nami stiffens, sympathetic. "I'm sorry."

"No, that's alright. I'm not worried about it," Robin dismisses with a quick wave of her hand. "I've only been speculating something. If she's still alive, then she may be working with the Marines at this point."

"Eh? The Marines?" Nami's voice thickens an octave. Her train of thought is, if anything, speeding up across faces, placing names on each. The notion of having crossed seas with the woman in question—and, possibly, again—without even realizing it disturbs her somewhat. "You're saying she always wanted to be a Marine?"

"Yes." Robin nods. "She was well-spoken even at a young age, with a strong sense of justice befitting of her dream."

"That's why you ran away."

"It's a little more complicated than that. And it was not an easy decision," Robin says tentatively, then mellows a little close to musing. "I think about it sometimes, wondering if I get to see her whenever I'm in enemy territory."

Robin leans her head back like a jaded marionette, staring at a point past the ceiling, almost as if she can find her answers among the constellations beyond it. Her words carry unsettling echoes. Nami doesn't want to know how it feels. It crushes her to imagine the idea of losing Nojiko at all, especially through betrayal or conflicting alliances. What Robin feared, and still fears, has already happened to her; hundreds of variations, hundreds of promising circumstances that suddenly scuttle off-course. This is one of them. And in such a black mood, Nami finds it hard to look at Robin for too long.

"You don't want to fight her," Nami realizes.

A pin-drop pause.

The small smile on Robin's face is grave. Immediately, Nami understands.

Their conversation dies out in smoke, although the wake of it endures like embers. Robin feels ashamed, embarrassed for having dragged Nami into a muddle she's not meant to wade.

"I'm sorry I ended up talking about myself tonight," Robin says quietly.

But Nami doesn't look the least bit judgmental. She appears bewildered, in fact, that she's been apologized to at all. "No, that's fine! I'm glad you told me," comes the jaunty reassurance, and she winks, her smile cheeky and sun-beaming. "You needed a sister at the moment, right?"

Robin doesn't miss the implication behind it. Her eyes prickle fondly with gratefulness. "Nami."

"I guess there's one thing I can do for you. Let me know once you see her," Nami proposes, setting her half-finished mug on the table with a ceramic clink. She takes the spoon out and jabs it at Robin's way, waves it ceremonious and wily. "I'll take her money."

Robin chuckles. "I'll be sure to do that."

The smile on Nami's face lingers, a sprinkle of daylight on a withered tree, filtering through crevices where only the strongest rays reach. Robin's tongue feels like a cotton ball, but she's better. And it takes no longer before the bosom state of repose bundles them in a cocoon. It can simply be assumed that it's Nami's doing. It's a situation of her caliber. Weathering through storms, metaphorical or no; her second nature as a navigator puts her immediate vicinity at ease.

Nami leaves the sofa and ambles for the bed. It's safe to conclude that she doesn't want to press the matter at this point. Two years and a stretch of months warrant enough understanding that Robin is not always keen in divulging everything. Tonight has been full of too much vulnerability. But Nami being here, and just being here, is an undemanding offering that Robin can take or ignore as she chooses.

"I'm going to get some shut-eye," she says, crawling to the sheets. "What about you?"

"Not until later," Robin declines. "I'll finish what I've been reading this morning."

With a grinding slowness, Nami stares at her as though laboring through a haze. Then she nods, decides to let her be. "Okay, then." She pulls the covers up to her chest. "Good night, Robin."

Robin schools a calm gaze. "Good night."

When she sees Nami's lashes flutter close, the newfound quiet singes her raw. She picks up the volume she had been meaning to indulge for the night. She flips to the page she's meant to resume forthwith and wanders her eyes through the printed text. It's an old book, the scent of something ancient waiting to be discovered.

Her mind aches with a voice she hadn't heard in so long.

_I don't have a Demon Child for a friend or a sister!_

Robin's brows crease into a solid frown. She can't do this here. She can't do this now.

There's no use falling apart over something that can no longer be remedied. It's over. That's the most important thing.

Tomorrow, she thinks to herself, closing her eyes. Tomorrow.

* * *

The next morning arrives without incident.

It only takes a full-course breakfast for them to discern their restful interlude as a curse in disguise. The crew had been understandably negligent, a little too caught up. There lurks the menacing need to replenish their supplies; Cola, most especially, their optimal trump card should the weather be at odds or, most unfavorably, when barraged by a fleet of ships on all sides. It's difficult to fret over fundamental measures when the sun is being good-humored. Nami hasn't pitched in a warning of a storm overhead.

Robin sits down on the outdoor recliner, half-cast in shadow by the umbrella and surveys the ship with a leisurely detachment. She catches Luffy's figure first (it's hard not to). Luffy, whose expression is ablaze with joy, eyes wide and brimming with a pair of rose-colored lens; it's like he can't make out the prospect of danger, of hunger, or of any repercussions thereafter. A swarm of frenzied excitement. He's perched on the figurehead, arms crossed, and overseeing all of the ocean, fringes buffeting and his straw hat unyielding in the breeze. From her distance, she watches a flock of birds circling then swooping into the endless stretch of blue.

She hears the faintest grunt of a snore to her far left. Robin shifts her gaze and is graced by the sight of Zoro, gilded by the onset of a tender strip of sunlight by the rails. She thinks, once again in one of her idle reveries, of the swordsman that she both knows entirely and doesn't know at all. Of the months and years they've shared as comrades, the wearisome yet steady establishment of a link worth strengthening for, compared to those bygone days of distrust. They've barely ever spoken about it (let alone spoken to one another in length), both of them stitched to their individual tapestries of battles and ambitions. Robin reads the scars that have marked their domain over his torso, over his eye, catching light of their history and predicts the many imprints of war he's yet to suffer. She thinks of the stalwart, refined monument of a future waiting for him. This is what she admires. His honest, unpretentious drive. She wants to keep watching that.

The day feels warm, though it's slivered with the encroaching chill of sea breeze. Robin stands up after a moment. She approaches Zoro with a natural stealth to her gait, pulling her jacket from the recliner. Something kept and reserved should the weather turn for the worse. This one wasn't bought cheap either. A trademark hue of purple.

What stops her for a bit is a jolt of memory.

She remembers approaching Zoro like this, perhaps in the same hour, under the same kind of blue sky, his back against the rails. And he's sneezed. But his hands had itched for the hilt, then, his words as snappish as his reflexes. _I told you. Don't stand beside me._

Robin folds the jacket over her arm.

Her heels click light against the deck as she bends low, draping it over his broad frame, the strong cut of his shoulders. Zoro doesn't move. She's looking right at him with something thick in her expression. And there's a small smile on her face like she's pleased.

"Sleep well."

Robin straightens herself up then heads over to the rest of the crew.

In the distance, Sanji has been observing the two and doesn't speak, just rolls an unlit cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. He watches the moss-head stir as soon as she leaves. Zoro peeks with an eye open, sees Robin's hair curl against her shoulders. He makes a light click of his tongue, annoyed by the assault of sunlight, and pulls Robin's jacket over his head. He smells the strong scent of flowers. He doesn't mind.

Sanji places the cigarette between his lips and takes a lighter from his pocket. He sparks it to life in a quick flare, lingers his gaze on Zoro, then at Robin, then drags the smoke out in a long, contemplative trail.


	3. the gloomy sky

The strike of thunder had been beyond their expectations. Before then, Nami had stumbled out, conveying a quick warning across the deck that a storm is underway. All eyes swivel to the sky and their mouths go ajar, noise robbed empty from their throats.

In a second, rains arrive in spattering rounds that immediately swell into fury. That doesn't seem to be the only thing coming for them. It's as if the rain had decided to visit and invite friends. The Thousand Sunny gets rocked with a piercing gale and the seas toss the ship in an outburst of some unforeseen, divine temper that near-capsizes them underwater.

"What's with all this ice?!" Usopp's screaming as he holds unto Brook's pants, who, in turn, had been clinging unto the mast. He's closed his eyes against the shrilling tempest and the abrupt shower of falling icicles, the twisting sensation in his gut, yelling over and over. Competing with the screech of the wind and determined to win.

"Usopp-san, you're going to strip me naked," Brook mutters. "Though I'm all bones and no skin."

Chopper's crying senseless and his hooves are digging unto Robin's head for dear life. "We're gonna die! We're gonna dieeeeee!"

Robin's gaze locks on the sky. "Not before we get stabbed to death by these large icicles, we're not."

Usopp barks, "How is that any _comforting_?!" He flicks a glance to his right. By the rails, Zoro's perfectly asleep and unaffected. Robin's jacket is flapping furiously against his face. "Of course you always find the _right_ time to sleep!"

"How long is this going to last? Franky!" Nami roars over the wrecking wind. "There are rocks up ahead! Make sure we don't crash into those!"

"Got it!"

Franky drives all his strength against the helm, urging the Thousand Sunny, wordlessly damning the storm in the gnarling roots of his thoughts.

"Gyahahahaha! This is fun!" Luffy laughs. He's striking one icicle, then another, never missing a beat. And a large one will have threatened to pierce through the hull if not for him shattering it to pieces with his fist. "Hey, Nami, can we eat all these?"

Nami is about a second into a psychotic break. "Do you want to _die?!_"

"Ahhhh, you're still most beautiful when you're scared, Nami-_swan!_" Sanji yells with flailing arms, casually kicks an icicle into smithereens. "Just hold on to me!"

"The wind's letting up!" Franky calls out.

The cryptic squall begins to slacken its force, certain and drastic. It dwindles until the wailing tides retreat into mere, shy ebbs. Then a complete, unbelievable stillness. Chopper sways with swirls for eyes, slumping into Robin's arms with exhaustion.

The Straw Hats draw out their breaths and stay motionless, watching the world as if they're waiting for it to end here.

"Is it... over?" Usopp croaks on the deck, lolling weak and dead weight, not quite keen on knowing if he can still twitch movement into his limbs.

Zoro's eye slowly opens. He glances around with a dullness, a plain confusion. He sees his crewmates exchanging words among themselves, more bone-tired than he cares to assume, and their clothes are sodden with rain. He checks himself and realizes he's as waterlogged as the rest. Only Luffy is grinning among them, a patch of daybreak in the wake of the wind-scoured ship. The rest of the crew are struggling to understand how he managed to survive at all. Zoro grabs Robin's jacket in a fistful hold and notes its wet, sorry state. He makes a face. When did _this_ one get here?

He brings himself to stand and makes his way headfirst towards Robin. A well of uncertainty shores up on him at the sight of her. She's standing there for a long, unyielding moment, an indecipherable quality to her gaze as she looks on to the bantering between the crew. Robin's soaked through, a tad bedraggled, her shirt stuck to her skin; she's worse for wear as much as he is. When he's close enough, Robin senses his presence and turns her head to look at him. Her hair is dripping small drops of rainwater past her eyes, expression hollowed with a touch of inquiry, yet still unreadable as it can be. Zoro's not sure what she's thinking, wonders since when he had cared enough to actually try figuring her out.

"Robin," he says, tossing the jacket her way, to which she catches with one hand. "That's yours, right?"

There's an acknowledging hum in Robin's throat that's reminiscent of quiet wind chimes. "Quite the sound sleep you had despite all that."

"Huh?" Zoro looks at her, confused. His face is as impassive as ever, nonetheless. "What the hell happened?"

Robin's disbelief has yet to reach her features, perhaps never to be realized. It's been a long while since she's witnessed a smidgen of his thick-headed bearings. Zoro was never any good at being meticulous of events he no longer needs to be aware of, let alone remembering right from left in his faulty sense of directions. If not swordsmanship, he prefers to make crisp remarks and barbed suggestions than keeping tabs with all that's transpired.

Regardless, she looks at Zoro as though he should be grateful he wasn't stabbed or nicked to death by the icicles. She chuckles in amusement.

"Nevermind," Robin dismisses in lieu of explaining and starts to walk past him.

His blank face clocks into something vexed, brows knitting and his jaws ajar. If he had the words, he will not have helplessly grunted after her. "Why are you such a weird woman," he mutters.

"You're on another level yourself, I believe," Robin retorts primly, with a hinted tone of playful condescension as she lifts her jacket. "Is that frown all I'll get in return? I hope you haven't left a drool or two on this one."

"You—..." His eye twitches, finds himself tipping from a fine tightrope of self-consciousness and irritation and realizes, belatedly, that he's been meaning to say _something else_.

Zoro's lungs seem to have forgotten they have a job to do. He feels a streak of warmth well up to his face, reaches to the tips of his ears. He ruffles his head as he walks past her. "Thanks, I guess."

He can feel Robin's smile boring into his back.

* * *

Vice Admiral Alliyah's office is relatively neat and orderly, but it stands out in its utter soullessness, sterile from the slightest humor. There are far too much monochromatic pulses and heavy furniture. Nothing colorful or light to compensate for the expected formality; no small plants, not even a complementary carpet on the floor. It's enough of a void lunacy to suffocate any visitor despite its vastness, its walls that bounce off the faintest sound. There's a certain darkness in here that conveys the memorandum: something is wrong. Or—something can go wrong.

Beyond the office is livelier, and one anyone prefers over the bleak silence inside. While Alliyah remains solitary and unruffled, everyone else behind that door jostles on their last legs, which is a typical spectacle, but one she thankfully doesn't have to set her sights on every minute.

Alliyah flicks idly through newspapers—rich blocks of printed text detailing Gecko Moria's demise and the pictorial return of the Straw Hat pirates. An average islander's tattle-lust. She considers if they might be worth rereading.

Gecko Moria died in the battle at Marineford, huh. What bollocks.

Still, she thumbs through, intrigued by the thorough daydreams of worldwide affairs and unimaginable powers, of unspoken eras to come.

She's midway through an article when she hears a knock on the door.

"Commander Alliyah. Here to report!"

So adrift is she in the encumbrances of everyday that she hasn't welcomed the very notion of having company for a while. Rarely, too, does she get random visitors at all, even from the likes of Marine officers.

"Come in."

Lieutenant Levi opens the door and steps inside. When he does, the feeling is akin to slipping into a cold, foggy film in a rainforest. If he were to be truly honest, he's long since attempted to psych himself up before braving a couple of steps to the threshold. And now that he's finally here, his thoughts are ensnared in a weak-kneed tilt-a-whirl. Vice Admiral Alliyah doesn't look the least bit conceited, intimidating, or any other adjectives stressed when associated with higher-ranked Marines.

Detached is most likely the word.

"Commander," he starts, raises a hand to his head in a routinely salute. "A pirate ship has just been sighted at the coastlines."

Alliyah has maybe been expecting this for some time.

Her eyebrows crease in displeasure. "What rotten luck."

"It's the Straw Hats," he adds, wonders if their mention will send a landmine off her senses somewhere. "They've arrived on the island of Hirashima."

A scraping pause. He sees that Alliyah is yet to say anything, but he can tell that there's something unwinding in her, eluding language and coherent thought. She imprisons her words in a thickened throat, pushing them down with the returning mask of nonchalance. Lieutenant Levi exhales through his nose.

"The Straw Hats, hm? It's about time we finally meet them," comes the dry response. She offers him a humorless smile. "Noted. Don't engage for the meantime."

"Would that be wise? Shouldn't we have them apprehended at once?" he proposes.

"Not yet. Let them move first, while we wait and see. We can't have all our men wasted on these pirates," Alliyah insists. "I believe we're fed with more than enough stories about them. The Straw Hats are more perceptive than they appear to be."

Her eyes drop back to the newspaper in her hands, voice even-tempered and placid as a carefree ocean. It's going a long way to bewilder Lieutenant Levi without doing anything at all. Those pirates—he thinks with a Marine-biased certainty—are ones they should not allow to roam free even for a moment.

"I've gathered you knew one of the Straw Hats from your childhood days, Commander," he prods quietly. He waits for a reply. A word. A twitch at her brows, wants so much of anything that his body actually strains for it.

Alliyah's eyes travel up to meet his. It's a sunless gaze padded with indifference, casting no warmth since the first day he'd been working under her. "It seems you've done your homework. Congratulations."

He holds himself straighter, to look taller than he really is, something to betray his whirring indecision. "You could get recognized."

Alliyah responds with a small shrug. "That depends," she says, weighed down by coolness. "I doubt I still look the same."

Her hands suddenly itch for something else, sorting through her desk. She feels her eyes bleed at the sight of boxes upon boxes of papers, fragments of a veteran Marine like herself, some of her books making architecturally shoddy heaps in spare spaces. Fixing all this clutter will be grueling; she stops to gravitate towards a couple of bounty posters that she hasn't perused for quite a while, relishing the memory that pricks with a veneer of sepia snapshots of time now vanished. She fishes out two in particular.

One of them features Nico Robin as an eight-year-old child, expression ground down in a deserted bitterness too congealed for a little girl to wear. The other displays her as an adult, head semi-tipped in a dedicated angle, but with an earnest insistence. A singular focus. Fearless resolve amounting to the infamy declared in typeface lettering.

"The Demon Child has grown," Alliyah muses, alternating inquisitive gazes between the two bounty posters.

Lieutenant Levi entertains the idea that a little vulnerability has been shed, and anyone else would have been smug about it if they'd witnessed an unwilling peel of her calm. But as it is, Alliyah looks as if Nico Robin is a stranger, and he wonders what he's missing.

"What will you do once you see her?" he asks, more for his sake than hers. At the tail end of it, Alliyah resists the urge to falter. That would have been a sign of weakness, and she's never one to show any inkling of it, least of all to a nosy Lieutenant. She has to begrudgingly hand it to the other for showing interest albeit being offhand in his approach.

Alliyah looks straight at him, releases a wisp of a breath through her nostrils. "I wonder."

"If I may be so bold... " he hesitates. "You act a little like her. The way you talk. And your sense of calm."

"Is that so?" Alliyah says, with a tone that seems to imply that this wasn't the first she heard of it. She has grown exhausted of the recurrence. "I can't say I'm flattered."

"There's just a bit of a difference, though," he allows.

She closes her eyes, her sea of thought shrouded in shadows. When she opens them, she wills herself to declare, "I think I know what that is."

In a trip switch speed, Lieutenant Levi yelps at a flash of silver in his vision. His chest burns with the chill of dread. He opens his mouth, closes it, then turns his head to the nearest wall, seeing the two bounty posters dug deep against the surface with a sword.

A trickle of sweat trails his neck.

_When did that happen?_

"Nico Robin is a sentimental fool," Alliyah says, her voice a brittle cold that swathes him in an icy crisp, permits something darker, angrier to bloom in its wake. "I'm not."

* * *

Since the storm, Franky's mired in an incensed mood that refuses to rebound until he has his robot-studded hands full with fixing the ship. Granted that there are only minor repairs to be had. The Thousand Sunny was able to hold its own, surprisingly too well, considering the average stint of a ship's survival rate. Either Franky had indeed fashioned it to be impenetrable or the Sunny possessed uncanny willpower.

The rest of the crew squanders a generous amount of time changing out of their clothes from the aftermath, hanging them to dry under the newfound scorch of heat. Nami and Robin bathe themselves fresh. After what seems to be an allotted lull period, Luffy's declared at the top of his lungs at the sight of an island. They can't decide whether to perk up or groan in unison. Ultimately, the idea of getting supplies rewrites their unease with a pronounced patina of delight. As the island edges further in sight, plain contentment escalates into giddy excitement.

"It's awesome!" Luffy exclaims happily, hovering a hand to his head and views their destination from his vantage point. "Look at all those people!"

Collective sounds of awe resound from their throats. The island feels like it can swallow them whole; just beyond the thick shore of white-gold sand is a direct, panoramic eyeshot of what appears to be a bustling, coastal city. They behold traces of life from the complex stretch of establishments and houses as far as their vision can catch.

"This looks like a busy place," Chopper chirps in wonder, leaps to cling at the back of Luffy's shoulder to join him in relishing the sights.

"Nn?" Franky pulls up his sunglasses. "What's that on the other side?"

Some of them track the course of his gaze and land on a distant, dense cover of a lush forest, thick enough to be deemed an intimidating jungle of sorts. They can make out a couple of houses dotting some ways off the greenery. The very glimpse of them will not have been odd if not for the fact that there's a city stretching to the other end. This forest feels like a rude barrier between the two, an indicator of a marginal exclusion. It's conclusive evidence that the city is more well-tended to than the small village. They're not sure if that one's even a village. It looks utterly abandoned and void of liveliness.

"It's terribly barren, isn't it?" Brook murmurs, unsure of what to say. He feels an evoking twinge when it comes to anything deserted, knows what it's like to be jilted quickly, so suddenly, when fate does its worst at being merciless.

"Does anyone live there?" Usopp wonders.

Sanji's teeth clench his cigarette. Zoro, Nami, and Robin watch in silence, words clogging in their throats.

The first thing they stir about as soon as they reach the island's coastlines is submerging in their mental drudgery of where to go and what to do. They each decide they're better off replenishing necessities, then branch wayward to their explorations. Franky asserts he's going to stay with the ship for a while and do repairs.

"Would they welcome a skeleton like me?" Brook glances at himself. Beneath all that sophisticated garb and distinctive afro, the answer feels obvious.

"That's fine," Usopp waves with a grin that shows off too many teeth. "I can just say you're my slave after I raided a fortress full of skeletons in a deserted island."

"Eeeeh?!" Chopper's eyes pop out of their sockets. "You _did?!_"

Zoro scoffs from afar. "You can't be serious."

"_Shishishi_. They must have a lot of meat!" An ear-to-ear grin spreads, and Luffy grabs the rails to propel himself off the ship in a rubber leap. "_Yosh!_ Let's go, guys!"

"Hey! Luffy!" Nami calls out after him, infuriated and high-pitched. "Don't just jump off on your own!"

Her words fall on deaf ears, curdling into thin air as she watches him bound straight for a stout old man holding a fishing rod. A sigh close to a groan sifts past her lips.

Franky lifts his gaze from his toolbox and calls out to the nearest crewmate. "Robin!"

She turns her head.

"I got a favor to ask," he says. "Bring some cola back from the island for me."

Robin nods without question. "How much of it do you need?"

"I'm gonna need three to five barrels." Franky glances to the one beside her. They always stand next to each other these days, he notices. "Zoro bro, care to help her out?"

"Yeah," Zoro says, thinking this is infinitely better than being wormed into one of Nami's gruesome errands. "We still don't know what the island's got for us, though."

"We'll most definitely bring you some when they have a supply," Robin promises.

"_Ow!_" Franky gives them a thumbs-up. "Thanks a lot!"

"This gives us plenty of opportunities to explore." Robin's attention returns to Zoro, her decided companion in the interim. "I've been thinking that my archaeological books might need additional volumes to the pile. And along the way, there could be a katana shop, or a famed place selling sake. Considering the bustling activity, I'd say the possibilities are endless."

Zoro's smile tugs crooked. "You've tempted me."

"It's settled," Robin says. She's feeling oddly excitable at the prospect. "While we're at it, we ought to get information from the people living in this island."

"We'll have to check if they're fine with pirates," Zoro concurs. "Luffy's still going to cause trouble before that happens."

"Robin?" Nami calls from a little further off their periphery, walking closer to the duo with an expectant air to her features. "Should we get going? I think there'll be a couple of boutiques we could stop by."

"I'm sorry." Robin gives her a rueful smile. "I'll be going with Zoro to see if there's a supply of cola in the island."

"Oh." Nami blinks, taken aback. "Okay."

"Nami-swan?" Sanji waves with both arms. "Your _prince_ is here if you need help with your shopping!"

Nami doesn't bother to hide her dismay. She mumbles, "I guess you're better than nothing."

"You and Zoro? Just the two of you?" Usopp asks Robin. And he's not asking for general curiosity's sake. He thinks he can smell something different in the air, peculiarly weightless at the swell of a new thought, sharp and intrusive. He can't make out the words to describe it. He has only ever been good with telling lies.

"That's right," she confirms simply.

"Robin-chan..." Sanji widens his eyes in realization. Usopp mirrors his expression, then exchanges with him an inexplicable look of surprise. As they shift their gazes back at the pair, what they wish to say burns at the tip of their tongues.

They suddenly prostrate themselves to the ground:

"_PLEASE MAKE SURE ZORO DOESN'T GET LOST!_"

Zoro barks, "I'm going to _cut_ you both!"

The next second, he feels a fist seize his coat, and he sees—in disgusted horror—the ero-cook rising in a deep-violet miasma.

"Oi, listen, you moss-ball. If there's so much as a _speck_ of dirt on Robin-_chwan's_ pretty face," Sanji sizes the swordsman up with an ugly snarl, nostrils flared. "I'll bash your teeth in with one foot. _Blindfolded_."

Zoro's glare darkens into blades. "What are you on about, you shitty twirly brow? I'm not that woman's bodyguard."

"Unlike you, I make sure a lady is perfectly safe." Sanji's eyes narrow into dangerous slits. "I don't care if _you_ die."

"How about I just dice your ass up into bits, you piece of shi—"

Nami decks them both square in their faces, sends them flying straight to the kitchen. Clattering of dishes and all. "Get a hold of yourselves already!"

Brook shrieks, "Nami-san, so harsh!"

Usopp and Chopper flinch in unison, eye-twitching. Robin chuckles.

* * *

"_Tch_. That witch never changes."

Zoro's been grumbling with a huge bump on his head. A shiny, pulsing red.

"She's a feisty one," Robin agrees absently, glancing this way and that at what seems to be this island's central plaza. She marvels at the shops and restaurants, the gaudy window displays, several street performers gloating entertainment with a flourish.

Everything looks well. Really well, in fact. Robin hasn't experienced such contentment in an island for ages, and she soaks in the concord and the absence of tension, the fussy crowds, the vendors, the prattle of children, the rowdy men. She lingers her eyes on bookshops as she walks, noting their location and the landmarks in its vicinity with the intention of visiting them later. It's not quiet. Noise is good sometimes.

"What an interesting place," she comments, her features growing soft in remembering the city of shipwrights, except this one lacks the waterways and canals. "I haven't seen something like it in two years."

It strikes Zoro with an unsettling beat that it really has been a while. Since before the fiasco of the Franky Family. Before their raid at Enies Lobby. Still, times have changed and the boundless mass of the New World moves in greater variety, more colors, more differences. More danger. There is the clamor of at least five different arguments he can hear at once. And here something remains constant, people moving out of their way in a wordless, parting tide. They are pirates. It's clear that they'll never fit here. Not now. Or ever.

He looks at Robin, sun-dipped and softly beaming. There is something clawing in his chest. His heart rises to his throat, like the initial surge of Aqua Laguna. He walks past a flashy gift shop, the boxes of themed postcards, the color-coordinated stationery, but Robin is all he sees.

"Watch your surroundings," Zoro cautions her, no-nonsense all the way, already casting a judgmental eye over everyone else passing in sight. Men. Women. Some children. "You'll never know who you'll run into with this kind of crowd."

Robin looks, and she sees his visage screwed into a frown. His walking has become leaden, mechanical. He's shooting passive, unwanted glares as if everyone is irritating him. It's a familiar display. And Zoro has always been a creature of habit. She doesn't know what he's anxious about, but she takes a guess.

"It's alright," Robin finally says after a while. "None of what happened to me in Water 7 will happen again."

Zoro's face is a scowl, clashing with the sunlight, like he just isn't sold with her reassurance.

"You don't know that," he says pointedly. "Don't let your guard down."

She can see the entire route of this conversation before they even set foot on it. I'm not scared anymore, she wants to say. I have companions, I'm stronger, I'm better, I'm better...

"Are you worried?" Robin asks, subdued.

Her response is silence.

She's learned over the course of these lapses that it's not that Zoro isn't listening. He can hear Robin, can hear the background hubbub, can hear their footsteps in rhythm. Some things just go without saying.

Zoro didn't say yes to her question. But he didn't say no either. Robin can work with that.

"Let's hurry up and see if there's cola," he reminds her.

She walks into his shadow, right by his side where she's sure it's safer. They're closer than what's deemed comfortable, but in this situation, he doesn't mind.

"Thank you, Zoro," Robin says. She thinks she owes him that much.

He's looking elsewhere but at her. "I didn't do anything."


	4. forsaken of even light

With the barrels of cola in tow, it takes them a long time to thread through the city, considering the crowd-congested routes and the leisurely speed in their gaits. Zoro might chalk it up to inevitability that they were able to acquire cola at all considering how well-provided the island is. It has every figment of a vagabond's dream. If they wanted, they'd hoard a surplus. They pepper some significant stops, intending to make the most out of the simmering afternoon. Robin doesn't resist the impulse to check a particular bookshop meant for the downmarket breed. If the impoverished nature isn't enough to drive her away, the books' moth-eaten pages aren't going to do it either. It has claimed the reputation of being a local monument, in that most inhabitants take it for granted that it's there, now often used as a landmark when giving directions, and think nothing more of it.

Zoro idly kicks a pebble as they wander past another small district. The scenery has become less marked with shopping endeavors the further they travel, becoming more downtrodden in life, passing a set of curious glares that watch them go. It's nothing they're already used to. They see a couple of signs for bars and taverns, and Zoro's beginning to feel peckish, his mouth dry and famished from the lack of alcohol, to which Robin remarks in passing she finds surreal: craving for a tankard of beer instead of food at such an hour. He quips something about swamping in drinks being better than indulging in Sanji's lunches. Robin thinks he's lying.

"I'll be going to the information center after this," she says, her arms kept calm and lethargic on her sides, yet beside her is a cart of cola she's been pushing past with a handy group of extra limbs. The very sight of these garner interested (and sometimes briefly horrified) glances from a number of people passing by.

"Fine," Zoro replies without hesitation. He's carrying his own share of barrels on both shoulders with ease. His weights were tons heftier. "I'm coming along."

There's something immediate in his words that has Robin kept captive in an unceremonious pause. She lets loose a small smile, a brief moment of sincerity. Robin looks back ahead so he doesn't catch it. "I don't mind. Unless if you prefer to go with the others."

Zoro scoffs, but his heart isn't in it. "I don't need headaches."

Robin chuckles at this. That rich, echoing thing. He thinks to give her due credit: it isn't a high-pitched migraine. Or a boisterous mess like Luffy's. Zoro's ears immerse at the musical quality of it. It layers in on itself, pulsing and incomprehensible.

"Oh? No naps at the ship?"

"I can't sleep with that cyborg junk around," he says, too quickly. Robin hums, indulgent.

"Franky will make you pay for that."

Zoro sees her lips upturned at the corners, akin to being supplied a valuable clue on a treacherous riddle. There is delight in it as well. A weight out of the shadows in her eyes. He slings a smirk in turn, and he slowly glances away, surer, feels a glow welling that he can almost describe as contentment.

"He can try."

After a while, they hit the more familiar, vacant streets leading to the docks, which, to Zoro's point of view, still appear to be carbon copies of the previous ones they walked past. And every nook and corner seems to be moving around and leading them astray, a navigational betrayal the rest of the crew can't grasp (he doesn't know why he's the only one dealing with this kind of bizarre mishap in directions). He swears it's not his fault. Either everything is moving about or everything just looks the same. In this case, he thinks it's both. It's still beyond him how Robin appears to be so sure.

They pass great sweeping vendors clustered next to one another, roaming throngs of people engaged in mindless conversations and routinely haggling. Robin thinks it ripe to look for food, and figures she might find something of interest at least for Zoro's sake. Sanji has prepared lunches exclusively for her and Nami, and none for the rest until he is able to restock the fridge with more than enough to last them the next island. Their other option is to feed themselves with what this place has to offer in the interim.

It takes a few moments for Robin to find her curiosity entangled in a web of gossip from a group of women, declining and rising with several dissents that hint on a degree of secrecy. She steers her gaze away from the direction they've been going, her steps slower, as her brain ticks over in thought. It shouldn't surprise her if there are some things certain outsiders are not privy to. It comes with any island they visit. They can only hope these don't meddle in their affairs.

Her intrigue well and truly prodded awake, she allows an extra ear to bloom inconspicuously from a woman's back, guzzling what she can from the conversation.

Pirate ship spotted. To be captured. For sure. Silver Hunter.

_Silver Hunter?_

"Zoro." Robin stops in her tracks. "Could you wait here for a little while and watch over the cola?"

He halts as well, face stiff with impassiveness despite his confusion. "What is it?"

Her brows crease in thought. She looks over to the group of tattle-talkers. "I'm simply going to buy some more food."

Zoro is still and quiet for a long moment. Then, as if to serve a wordless answer, he sets the two barrels down to the ground, stepping close to the cart she had been trundling with. "Get going."

"I won't take long," Robin promises before walking ahead of him, mingling her presence among the crowds.

She is still within his line of sight. And she stops at a point nearby, sees her head lowered, glancing about and exchanging words with a particular vendor. His focus lingers. Unyielding.

"See something you like?" A voice pipes up from behind him, indicating a dosage of seniority. Zoro turns to the source and sees an old woman behind a display of what appears to be fine jewelry. She's fixing him with a friendly, albeit measured look. A look that says she's seen and experienced most things around these parts, and as such she deigns to wonder if he's from this island and has simply missed him all this time. Zoro considers her question and glances down at the quirky assortment she's selling. He admittedly has an abysmal sense of taste when it comes to jewelry, and if Nami were here, she'd squander hours bargaining with this smiling hag. Zoro looks back up, wondering how she isn't frightened of potential thieves.

"No," he replies. "Not really been round this neck of the island before."

"Travelers?" The woman seems delighted to have found an outsider to share small talks with in this listless hour. "Are you here on vacation? There's a park of wisterias just coming into season. Beautiful views." She glances at the barrels of cola beside him. "Those look really heavy."

Zoro rewards her with an unimpressed look. She has the kind of kiss-and-tell charisma he particularly despises. "Just stopping by," he answers carefully, which isn't entirely false to begin with. It depends on how much saplings of trouble Luffy has sowed thus far (and how much more while they're at it).

"You're with the lady with the hands?" The woman makes vague motions with her own hands. She must have seen Robin's ability while she's been pushing the cart. Zoro will have to admit it's a comical sight to see, if not for the nagging question at the tip of his tongue.

"You know about Devil Fruits?" he asks her.

"Is that what they're called?" she smiles, relieved that she's finally in the knowledge of what _those_ are. "She's not the first one I saw with something like it."

That can imply several points. She may have had sampled her sights on Luffy and the other Devil Fruit users within the crew, had witnessed outsiders in the past using their abilities, or there's another Devil Fruit user in their midst. He wonders if everyone else in the island is aware of their existence, what their general stance is when having to deal with inevitable threats. This island seems wide open and unprotected.

"She looks familiar," the woman adds, looking ahead to a certain point beyond Zoro. She shifts her gaze back at him. "You too, son."

Her words throw everything into sharp clarity and he keeps his muscles from tensing, but his chest grows tight. More reflex than reaction. She had been meaning to recognize him. Recognize Robin. She simply can't place who they really are.

"Wanna try guessing?"

The woman's smile is innocent.

"I've got a bad memory."

Zoro's gaze mellows, mulched with a noncommittal air. "Lame excuse," he says, deadpan. He turns his head to look over to where Robin previously was, but she isn't there.

His brain skips a few circuits short.

Frowning, he makes a haphazard beeline ahead, then stops nearby, leaving the barrels of cola and hadn't even the mind to give the woman a dismissive gesture. He rudely collides shoulders with a stranger, a curse zipping past in place of an opportune apology, finding himself caged in the glare of a bespectacled old geezer carrying local history books.

History books. If only this one had been the archaeologist.

"Robin?" he calls to nowhere in particular.

She's probably gone back to the Sunny. Gone ahead to another place or something. She's fine, _she's fine_, she won't thank him for fussing like this, for someone's sake, he has to pull himself together.

It's easier said. Robin isn't anywhere, doesn't see the familiar waist-length cascade of raven locks, doesn't see a single floral print from someone's clothing that'll at least offer a scrap of hope. And despite his best intentions, Zoro's anxiousness is evolving into a full-fledged storm of actual panic.

"Robin?" he says again, casting his eyes around, yet he's kept his voice level, if not a little strangled tight in restrained alarm. He doesn't even shout it, because what would be the point.

Maybe someone from the World Government took her after all, he thinks irrationally, a hot bolt of terror driving through him. Maybe she just disappeared like last time for the crew's sake, taken by forces outside of their control, and Robin's been running for twenty years, give or take, so who was he kidding to think she's finally at ease with the Straw Hats. He shouldn't have been so naive. Two years of training under Dracule Mihawk and he's still so _naive_. He thinks (and he should have done this beforehand) on the last minute to exhaust his Observation Haki from this vicinity to—

"Zoro?"

Robin's behind him, looking bewildered, her hands a little full with food she's clearly just bought, her small backpack shouldered on one arm. She's a tad further off where he is and standing right next to the cart she once more laid claim with a number of phantom hands. Zoro strides towards her, wanting to snarl angrily without reservations, for actually _frightening_ him like that, but failing miserably as soon as she looms into his space.

"Where the hell were you?!" Zoro hisses, temper blistering low and furious, which is easier than calming the babel in his chest, at clearing the chill that's brimming him with a sudden frost. "You were somewhere nearby, and... Don't _do_ that again! You could have been... !" His mouth snaps shut, because he can't say it, and he bites his tongue as he hoists two of the barrels off the ground. "Whatever. Let's go."

All at once, Robin's dumbfounded—caught in some disorienting bemusement that holds her in place. She forces herself to move. And she starts walking after him without fanfare or resistance.

He's going the wrong way.

"So you're Robin, eh?" the old woman from before remarks. Robin stops to lock gazes with her, and it's the sort of look she has grown acquainted to all these years, having found it on different faces across the Grand Line more often than not.

This look of complete recognition of who she is.

The woman's smile feels like an empty victory. "That's a nice name."

Robin frowns, hardly misses a beat when she turns on her heels and pushes the cart. She doesn't look back.

Zoro can hear her steady footsteps catch up to his pace. He watches squares and squares of houses loom by, reaching to no end, a persistent repetitiveness of scenery before he stops outside at a marketplace. He doesn't know where this is.

"Zoro," Robin finally calls and slows to a stop beside him. She lifts what she has purchased from the vendors, and, to his trained eye, a bottle of sake peeking out. "I bought you food, since Sanji hasn't prepared lunch for the rest of you. I suggest we take a break."

"That's a great help," Zoro says appreciatively, then gives a disgruntled glance at the path ahead of them. "How far are we?"

"You derailed east from where we were. We're back to where we came from sometime ago," she points out. "Fortunately, I found a place we could stop by. Recompose ourselves."

Robin does as she says, leading him to a corner he might have bypassed in his sight prior; there's nothing significant worth committing to memory, what with the rickety house ingesting its own decay through the years and a spiderweb crack on the window glass untouched by sunlight. That's not exactly their destination, not really. Zoro quickly finds a wooden bench set against the outer wall. It looks abandoned and sad, but most definitely something any weary traveler can use for a restful pause.

They set down for lunch. It's all smooth in the initial phase: Zoro setting the barrels down, Robin wheeling the cart to a stop beside the bench, then her sitting and unwrapping the bento box. That's until he sits next to her. He's quiet and betrays nothing as he brings out what she bought for him. Still, he thinks of this moment, of them like this, side-by-side having their own fill. Zoro pauses at the scent of Sanji's lunch wafting in strong folds. Beneath it, the uncompromising perfume of flowers. He feels an axis tilt, a couple of defenses fallen, something growing and stretching out from under the skin of bygone days.

"It's strange," Robin suddenly says. Her eyes are on her food.

Zoro thinks her voice is so close.

"What?"

"Sanji told me my lunch only consisted of seafood and some sandwiches," she notes. "I didn't think there'd be something else."

His head lowers to assess what she finds so odd. Sure enough, he finds a modest selection of her favorites as what she had been told, and she has never been one of the crew's trademark gluttons, so these would have been more than sufficient. But he also sees a couple of meat and more than a fair share of rice balls than she's willing to partake. On a trivial note, he notices that Robin's bento box right now is bigger than what Nami's been given. Zoro had dismissed it beforehand.

This lunch. Prepared elaborately enough for two people. One of Robin's favorites. Then of Zoro's, all in this box.

He doesn't really want to know what this implies.

Zoro grunts in disbelief, "That dartbrow left his brain to the weather we just had."

As Robin mulls over in her own pool of surprise, her gut clenches. It might be a slight pang of hunger. Or a pit of realization she's not ready to fall into.

But she evades it, just lifts her chopsticks with an arched brow. "There's only one pair of these."

"Shitty cook." He grimaces, glancing to the distance. "What the hell is he thinking?"

"Since he had done this much, we can simply take what I bought to Franky once we head back. You can eat your share," Robin suggests.

"Not having any of it." Zoro takes out the bottle of sake. "Luffy can stuff the rest later."

Robin looks over at him, wonders if the vice-grip awkwardness around her throat is just her imagination. There's something that neither of them has bolstered the courage to confront. The afternoon is quiet and peaceful and she's feeling selfish. She doesn't want to leave loose ends unattended, however insignificant.

"Are you still concerned about earlier?" she finally asks.

"Shut up, woman. I wasn't worried," Zoro snarks, manages a glare in tandem with overt bullheadedness. "I didn't want to deal with that kinky shitcook ordering me around to look for you."

"I did say I wouldn't take long," Robin says. No-nonsense. A convenient tone, if not for the fact that it's wrong-footed in this situation. "And I haven't. It was barely a few minutes."

Zoro snorts, "Typical."

His cold disregard cuts. It's a deceiving front face-on since it's all he ever wears, but his faraway glare has become iron, has turned tight with force. Something suffocates just a breadth. A tremble carrying in the air. When the silence drags, she realizes her misstep. An apology is at her lips, red and wretched as her tongue tries to stir the words in motion, but she reins them back.

She opens her mouth.

"I promised Chopper two years ago I'm not going anywhere," Robin says, contrite. "And I intend to keep that promise."

Zoro looks at her for a long, drawn-out moment. He closes his eye, breath steady. Better. A good sign. Something in his chest eases.

Then, he says, "... I'll have a bite."

He doesn't see her face, but he can make out slender fingers tinkling with a pair of chopsticks. It sounds natural, that motion. Robin says nothing. Her hand moves up, holding a piece of meat to his lips. His eye opens. And he hesitates for a moment, then his jaw slacks open to receive it.

As always, per Sanji's steep standards, it's a taste like no other.

It's—pleasant.

His eye opens and the silence suddenly doesn't seem as stifling.

Robin gives him an intrigued look, fondness in the quirk of her smile. "Delicious?"

Zoro shrugs in careless dismissal. He has an arm behind his head, his other hand holding the bottle of sake by its neck, and it's like the last conversation hadn't come to fruition. He's very good at that, ignoring the things he doesn't want to think about too much. "It's not half-bad."

There's the sound of mad chatter around them, and someone drunkenly shouting, echoed by a squawk of laughter. Time is obnoxiously slow in its ticking. It's all white noise, buzzing in the space between Zoro's ears. Robin lifts another piece of meat for him with her chopsticks, eyes passing over his just once, a faint upturn of the lips. The cloak-and-dagger smoothness. A fatal spark in the only way she knows how, in the only way he recognizes. It hasn't changed. She hasn't changed.

He doesn't smile back, but he leans in, biting into the bait without indecision. Just like that.

_Just like that._

* * *

It's already late afternoon when they head out of the bar.

Luffy barely waddles through the door without disturbing the hinges and terrifying the incoming patrons. His whole body is an insufferable balloon from endless servings of meat (and deliciously grilled ones), practically living in Sanji's and Nami's pockets until they had to be rebuffed from siphoning every last grub left. Weeding Luffy out through verbal means would've been wholly unsuccessful, if not for the conversation they had shared with that scraggly barkeep about the forest they saw upon arrival. And that's all it took for Luffy to tend to other itches other than bottomless hunger. He's finally getting round to being excitable more than usual, thinking there's some exotic, hostile wildlife in the forest waiting for his fists.

"That was great!" Luffy belches out in satisfaction close to Nami's face. "I'm stuffed!"

"Idiot." Sanji nudges a black shoe hard against Luffy's cheek. "Mind your manners in front of a lady."

"All my beri's wasted because of my kind heart..." Nami pours over her near-empty wallet, and she looks genuinely mournful, lifting her head to look at Sanji and pleads, "What should we do, Sanji-kun?"

"... N-Nami-san, I...!" Sanji then twirls over to her and takes both her hands in earnest verve. "I'll find you treasures worth a fortune!"

"C'mon, guys!" Luffy prods, smiling that overly infectious grin as he angles up the city bound for that sloping hill where the forest is. "Hehehe, I wonder what we're gonna find?"

"Luffy!" Nami calls out. "If there's nothing, we're going back!"

And, because she can't help it: "You owe me 66,000,000 beri!" She jogs up after him. "Every single day you don't pay up has interest, you know!"

Sanji takes a drag of his cigarette as he follows the two. It will only be a few more hours before the day tips into dusk. They approximately have a week before the Log Pose resets, and he considers what will happen, what kind of things they'll have to encounter, and whether or not they will have to fight at all. He sees fat-fingered shadows twist and cast jarring umbras against the towering foliage. They touch the landscape with looming distaste. The need to caution his crewmates swell with a stricken spur that peaks, and then crashes fruitless on the empty shores within him. Because of course heading into the unknown is all they ever do.

"Wait, Luffy," Sanji says as soon as he fully catches up to their pace. "I was wondering if we should talk to Robin-chan about this."

Luffy blinks before the realization snags. "Oh yeah! Good idea, Sanji!" he proclaims. "There's all that ancient stuff in there that Robin's gonna like. I'll call her!"

He pulls out his palm-sized Den Den Mushi to dial, eagerly stretches the corners of his smile as Robin answers and the snail's vacant guise morphs into her thoughtful features.

"Robin!" Luffy beams.

"Luffy," Robin replies from the other end, unfazed by his cheerful assault. "Is there a problem?"

"I'm with Nami and Sanji!" Luffy pipes up immediately, his patience the structural integrity of a crumbling sandcastle. He completely forgets for whatever particular reason he's decided to call her. "We were wondering if you wanna come with us to this forest! It's on a hill ways off the city. It's gonna be fun!"

Nami sighs, "I'll do the explaining."

As soon as she half-wrestles to take over, she ignores Luffy's grumbling protests and sets her gaze on the Den Den Mushi. "Hey, Robin. We just had a conversation with a barkeep about the forest. We don't know if it's dangerous yet. He said he hasn't gone there to find out."

"Is that the forest we saw when we arrived?"

"Yeah, that's the one," Nami affirms. "Anyway, he didn't give us a lot of details. He told us that an ancient civilization used to thrive around those parts, though. Maybe there's something you could find?"

Robin's lips make a barely noticeable curve of a smile, but that's as favorable as any reaction in their books. "That sounds interesting. I suppose I'll be going," she says. "Are you in the forest right now? I hope there are no wild beasts waiting to eat you alive."

_"We're not!"_ Nami cries. "Don't scare me like that just when I decided to go with this idiot!"

Robin chuckles, unapologetic.

"We're going back right away if there's nothing important." Run away if it gets too dangerous, is the translation.

"Ah, Nami-san," Sanji interjects. "I'd like to talk with Robin-chan for a bit."

Luffy folds his arms over his chest, petulant and waiting for the conversation to end so he can burst speed into adventure. "Robinnnn, let's go. Hurryyyy," he whines.

"Wait, Luffy," Sanji says, accepting the Den Den Mushi from Nami. "Robin-chan, we'll be going ahead. You can catch up with us later if we find each other. In that case, you shouldn't be going alone when you do. We're not sure what's in there yet. Is the crap swordsman with you?"

There's the familiar sight of a faint smile of amusement before his ears catch a distant, disembodied growl of, "Who're you calling crap?" before the shuffling of places, until he can make out the features of a scowl on the snail's features.

"Were you planning to sleep, asshole?" Sanji spats. "If Robin-chan's heading to the forest, you're coming with."

Zoro's face contorts in displeasure. He's been wanting to at least train alone after going to the information center with Robin. And he wishes to drown himself in bottles of rum for the rest of the day.

"How long are you gonna keep ordering me around? _You_ go with her," he gripes, barely contained temper singing the tip of his tongue. "Or don't tell me you can't protect two women at the same time? Your kicks have gone sloppy, haven't they, dartbrow?"

"I can protect _all_ the ladies, you shithead. I've been getting better since the last two years. You know why that is?"

"Huh?"

"I just have to imagine it's your ass I'm kicking, that's all."

"You asking for a fight, shitcook?"

"Shut up. Idiotic moss head. Just go with her," Sanji snaps, his teeth clenching around his cigarette. "It's not like you don't want to."

There's a beat of a silence before Zoro says, "Oi—"

Sanji ends the call.

"Let's go!" Luffy cheers, drawing his body to full height and pumping both his fists into the air. And that's how Nami parts her lips in unbridled surprise at the premature conclusion.

"W-wait, that's it?" she protests. "We don't know what's in the forest. Someone needs to go with Robin!"

Luffy's smile draws to a snap upside down, considering her for a moment—and, in a jolting, pained second, Nami thinks he's offended that her faith is so little. But he grins again, laughs like she's being silly, and reassures, "It's fine! Zoro's not leaving Robin all alone!"

Nami opens her mouth to spar with that line of thought, but she realizes that it leaves no room for disagreement.

Sanji sets a hand on her shoulder. When she turns, she sees him smiling, all her unwarranted concerns slowly lifting.

"He's right, Nami-san," Sanji says, shoves his hands into the depths of his pockets. He follows Luffy into the forest. "You're not seeing that shitty swordsman split off from Robin-chan anytime soon."


End file.
